The invention relates to a Hall effect sensor.
Hall effect sensors can be designed in such a way that said sensors can either record the magnetic field strength or the direction of the magnetic field.
In the case of Hall effect sensors which are designed to record the direction of the magnetic field, four pairs of Hall effect sensor elements can be arranged on a radius at an angle of 90° to one another. The Hall effect sensors are arranged in pairs in order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and to be able to better evaluate the resulting Hall voltage which is generally extremely low.
Each pair of Hall effect sensor elements comprises two Hall effect sensor elements which are arranged parallel to one another and are connected in parallel to one another and which correspond to the Hall effect sensor elements of the oppositely disposed pair. Each pair delivers a Hall voltage as a function of the current flowing through the elements of the pair and the direction (or strength) of the prevailing magnetic field. The direction of the magnetic field can be determined from the Hall voltages of the Hall effect sensor elements.
If one of the Hall effect sensor elements is defective, the Hall effect sensor no longer operates reliably. The service life of the Hall effect sensor described above is therefore determined by the shortest service life of one of the Hall effect sensor elements. For that reason, two redundant Hall effect sensors are frequently used.